The Cognitive Area

Question 1

What are the key assumptions of the cognitive area?

Answer 1

• Behaviour can be understood by investigating your processes such as memory
• People have freewill- have a degree of control/choice over behaviour- control over thoughts
• human beings are information processes which can be explained by the computer analogy- limited in terms of capacity
• research should be scientific- cause/effect, control of EVs, lab
• self report

Question 2

What are the advantages of the cognitive area?

Answer 2

The cognitive area has good scientific status- lab experiments which have highly controlled artificial settings- guarantee any change in the DV was due to the manipulation in the IV

Practical applications-
Loftus and Palmer- eyewitness testimony
Grant et al- students study in silence

Question 3

What are the disadvantages of the cognitive area?

Answer 3

Humans are not computers- Loftus and Palmer would say people have an emotional attachment to a memory

Cognitive reductionism- both studies ignored the social factors- Grant et al didn’t let students listen to their own music

Question 4

Why do cognitive psychologists often use experiments?

Answer 4

They use laboratory experiments because (cognitive approach is scientific) it gives better information/opportunities than field settings for careful manipulation and control of information processing

Question 5

Why do cognitive often ensure high control in their research?

Answer 5

Want to increase internal validity by maximising control of extraneous variables (e.g situational) and minimise interference of irrelevant events that take place in low control research- other factors that influence behaviour (maximise truthful results)

Question 6

Why do cognitive psychologists often rely on self report?

Answer 6

Because personal thought processes are based on abstract concepts which they try to measure- problematic because what people report may not be truthful due to demand characteristics and social desirability bias

Question 7

How does Grant el al’s study link to the cognitive area?

Answer 7

• Studied memory which is a cognitive process, investigated and learned the effect that context dependency has on behaviour
• lab experiment- high controlled, control of EV cause and effect (IV and DV)

Question 8

How does Loftus and Palmers study link to the cognitive area?

Answer 8

• studied memory which is a cognitive process, investigated and learned the effect that post event information has on memory and the effect of leading questions
• lab experiment- high controlled, control of EV cause and effect (IV and DV)